Alanis Morissette and Cyndi Lauper are among the artists who will perform at the inaugural Oceans Calling Festival, taking place September 30 to October 2 in Ocean City, Maryland.
Morissette will headline the event on Sunday, October 2, and Lauper also will perform that day.
The festival’s other headliners are Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds and The Lumineers, while the bill also includes Sublime with Rome, Toad the Wet Sprocket, O.A.R., Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Jimmy Eat World, Cage The Elephant, Young the Giant, Skip Marley, St. Paul and The Broken Bones, Dirty Heads and Grouplove. Festival co-founder O.A.R. will perform twice — on September 30 and October 2.
“We are thrilled to host Oceans Calling Festival in Ocean City, Maryland, and celebrate all our incredible city has to offer,” says Mayor Rick Meehan. “Thank you to C3 Presents and Maryland’s own O.A.R. for bringing an event of this magnitude to the Ocean City Boardwalk. We look forward to seeing everyone!”
Tickets go on sale this Wednesday, May 25, at noon ET. For the full lineup and all ticket info, visit OceansCallingFestival.com.
(WASHINGTON) — With the last batches of ballots still being tallied in Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary, Donald Trump weighed in last week to insist his chosen candidate go ahead and “declare victory” even though the counting wasn’t complete.
The former president has a long history of insisting elections are fraudulent when he’s expecting he won’t get the outcome he wants. But historically, election officials around the country from both parties have complied with the law to count up and certify the vote regardless of their politics.
That could change come November: Trump is backing a slate of candidates in battleground states (including Pennsylvania) who have said they support his mistrust in elections, despite any evidence of widespread fraud. If voted into office, these officials would have the power to run elections — or even try to reject or reverse the results — as Trump has repeatedly urged them to do.
“We have to be a lot sharper next time when it comes to counting the vote,” Trump said in a video message earlier this year. “There’s a famous statement: Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate. And we can’t let that ever, ever happen again,” Trump said, referring to a quote from Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin.
The next big test of Trump’s influence is Tuesday in Georgia, where he’s backed election-denier candidates down the ballot to challenge incumbents who wouldn’t do as he demanded in 2020 and overturn President Joe Biden’s victory. Democrats, and many Republicans, predict based on the candidates’ past statements that if they are chosen to represent the GOP and go on to win in the general election, they would interfere with future contests, especially under Trump’s pressure in 2024.
“Just a few years ago, this would have been considered a fringe and extreme view,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said of the rising tide of candidates questioning elections. “Now it’s been mainstreamed and very much normalized, and that’s a big, big problem.”
“It’s a potential emergency,” Simon added, “particularly going into a presidential election.”
The secretary of state is usually tasked with overseeing and certifying their local elections. They establish Election Day procedures and play a large role in validating the results, so any refusal to do so — while likely to face legal hurdles — could be a vital step in trying to overturn the ballots.
This year, the office is up for grabs in 28 states, including Minnesota, where Simon is facing a Republican who continues to cast doubt on the 2020 results. Simon said that voters in Minnesota and across the country should be able to trust their elected officials — unless there’s evidence of wrongdoing — to certify the vote of the people, no matter if the outcome is on their side.
“That’s what secretaries of state of both parties, to be fair, have done by and large over the last few years,” Simon told ABC News. “But this new crop of candidates is really alarming because they seem not to have those same values. They seem to be driven by an outcome.”
Some of these candidates have suggested they’ll cease absentee and mail-in balloting and continue audits of the 2020 election, among other actions at the position’s disposal that risk eroding voters’ confidence. Trump and his allies have not provided any proof of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and more than 40 legal challenges across the country failed.
Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican critic of Trump and co-chair of States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan advocacy group tracking the uptick in election deniers running for office, warned that if Trump were to get his loyalists in place for 2024, it would presumably be much easier to ensure a loss wouldn’t happen again.
“People tend to focus just on the federal races and federal elections but forget that they’re run by the states. And that’s why these elections are so important,” Whitman told ABC News, describing the thinking behind their strategy: “We change the laws, so we can change the referee, so we can change the outcomes.”
Of the 111 candidates Trump endorsed in the 2022 midterms, more than 70% say they believe the 2020 election was fraudulent, according to FiveThirtyEight research. And as of this month, at least 23 election deniers were running for secretary of state in 18 states, according to the States United Action.
Trump has officially endorsed three secretaries of state candidates in GOP primary races. Each of those contenders argues it’s more important to continue pursuing the possible truth of his debunked claims about 2020, despite the damage to democratic norms and erosion of voter confidence that experts say is well underway.
Here’s a brief look at election-denying candidates in six key states where Trump disputed the results in 2020.
Pennsylvania
State Sen. Doug Mastriano, whom Whitman called a “prime election denier,” earned Trump’s endorsement and handily won the GOP gubernatorial primary. The Pennsylvania governor’s office has powerful influence on future elections.
Mastriano chartered buses to the rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, where Trump spoke; was seen at the U.S. Capitol that day (but said he didn’t go inside); and he had been involved in a White House meeting with Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers in December 2020, as Trump worked to overturn the results in the state and in other presidential battlegrounds.
While Mastriano is not running for secretary of state, Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states, like Florida and Texas, where the governor appoints the office who serves as the chief elections officer. Democrats fear that Mastriano — who has been critical of mail-in ballots and called for an investigation of how Pennsylvania conducted the 2020 election, insisting he wanted to “restore faith in the integrity of our system” — could appoint a secretary of state beholden to Trump. Mastriano has avoided specifying how he would carry out that duty as governor.
Even Republicans are concerned with Mastriano’s win, as indicated by GOP candidates dropping out in the final stretch of the primary race to consolidate votes around the Republican candidate who ultimately fell second to Mastriano.
Georgia
The former president backed a slate of candidates ahead of Tuesday’s primary, all promoting forms of election denialism in their platforms.
If Herschel Walker and Rep. Jody Hice were to win a Senate seat and the secretary of state’s office, respectively, they could theoretically try to overturn future election results — by refusing to certify the vote and send it to Washington — as Trump had pushed Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, to do in 2020.
In an infamous January 2021 phone call, Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” nearly 12,000 votes to overtake Biden.
Hice, who is challenging Raffensperger, objected to Georgia’s electoral votes being counted for Biden and has said he’d decertify Biden’s 2020 win — a move that election experts say is not possible.
While Georgia has already undergone three separate audits which all confirmed Biden’s victory, Hice has said he would appoint a special counsel to investigate.
Arizona
In Arizona, Trump endorsed Mark Finchem, a far-right lawmaker in the state’s House of Representatives who attended the rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6.
Like Mastriano, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued Finchem a subpoena for “information about efforts to send false slates of electors to Washington and change the outcome of the 2020 election.” (Also like Mastriano, Finchem was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but said he wasn’t inside.)
Trump praised Finchem for an “incredibly powerful stance” on election integrity, well in advance of the GOP primary on Aug. 2. Finchem is sponsoring a bill that would treat Arizonians’ ballots as public records and make them searchable online, which experts warn could be exploited.
“These folks are supported by Trump, if only for the sole reason that they have said that they would seek ways — or have demonstrated already to seek ways — to undermine the election or actually return the election results,” Semedrian Smith, deputy director at the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, told ABC News. “It’s absolutely terrifying to imagine that folks who already claim now that they are willing to overturn the election results, it’s hard to imagine that they’re not absolutely going to do that down the road.”
Nevada
Jim Marchant, a former member of the Nevada Assembly running in the Republican primary for secretary of state on June 14, has said he would not have certified Biden’s victory had he been in the office in 2020.
Like Mastriano and Finchem, he was involved with a fraudulent election document attempting to award Nevada’s six electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden, which was submitted to Congress and the National Archives. Marchant doesn’t have Trump’s endorsement but has said Trump allies encouraged him to run.
Marchant’s website states that his “number one priority will be to overhaul the fraudulent election system.” He has said he supports changes to state law to allow the legislature to override the secretary of state’s certification of an election.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is one of nine states with a board or commission in charge of election oversight instead of just the secretary of state, but conservative leaders there are pushing to dismantle the bipartisan election commission.
State Rep. Amy Loudenbeck, the Republican front-runner for secretary of state, said she supports taking power away from the panel, which she has blasted as “broken,” and handing it over to the office she is seeking.
Nearly a dozen other states, meanwhile, have also attempted to diminish secretaries of states’ authority over elections or shifted aspects of administration to highly partisan bodies in the wake of the 2020 election.
In a sign of the fractured times, Wisconsin’s state GOP on Saturday opted not to endorse any candidates for statewide office ahead of the primary on Aug. 9.
Michigan
Trump, in Michigan, has backed Kristina Karamo, a community college professor who won her party’s nomination at a convention last month. She gained prominence after claiming, without evidence, that she’d witnessed irregularities in processing mail-in ballots while working as an election observer in Detroit in 2020.
Karamo will face Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat and former law school dean seeking her second term, whom Trump has attacked as “rogue.”
Benson faced an onslaught of criticism in the wake of the 2020 election and told NBC News last week, for the first time publicly, that Trump said in a White House meeting she should be arrested for treason and executed. A Trump spokesperson said Benson was lying, but Benson said the experience showed her “there was no bottom to how far he [Trump] and his supporters were willing to stoop to overturn or discredit a legitimate election.”
Simon, a neighboring Democratic secretary of state, told ABC News that all voters, including Trump supporters, should be concerned with the election-denier trend.
“No matter what issue you care about the most, you’re not going to get very far unless you have free and fair elections,” Simon said. “You want people running them who are going to be fair.”
(NEW YORK) — In the wake of Pfizer’s new pediatric COVID-19 vaccine data for children under the age of 5, which was released on Monday, the Food and Drug Administration has set new, tentative dates for when its advisers will meet to discuss the COVID-19 vaccine applications for children.
The FDA said it expects its independent Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee to convene in mid-June to discuss both Pfizer and Moderna’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccines.
“As we continue to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there are a number of anticipated submissions and scientific questions that will benefit from discussion with our advisory committee members,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement on Monday.
Although children 5 years and older already have access to a COVID-19 vaccine — and now a booster shot — through Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine, on June 14, the committee will meet to discuss Moderna’s emergency use authorization request for children ages 6 to 17 years of age.
The next day, on June 15, the committee will meet to discuss both Moderna’s emergency authorization request for children ages 6 months to under 6 years of age and Pfizer and BioNTech’s authorization request for children ages 6 months to under 5 years of age.
The new dates confirm the FDA anticipates that its advisers will review both Moderna and Pfizer’s applications for young children at the same time, which would indicate that both vaccines could be authorized by the end of June.
The FDA emphasized the dates are tentative, but officials noted that should any of the submissions be completed in a “timely manner and the data support a clear path forward following our evaluation,” the agency will move forward and convene the committee at an earlier or later date.
On June 8, 21 and 22, the FDA has held dates for its advisers to meet to discuss updates to the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech emergency use authorization requests. As more data and information is submitted by the companies, additional scheduling details will be released, officials wrote.
“The agency is committed to a thorough and transparent process that considers the input of our independent advisers and provides insight into our review of the COVID-19 vaccines. We intend to move quickly with any authorizations that are appropriate once our work is completed,” Marks said.
Ahead of an anticipated fall and winter surge, the FDA also announced new dates for the committee to discuss a possible new generation of COVID-19 vaccines, which could address already circulating variants.
The FDA also plans to convene its advisers on June 28 to discuss whether the COVID-19 strain composition of the vaccines should be modified for the fall.
Federal regulators are expected to decide on a new COVID-19 vaccine design in early July, which would allow vaccine companies to begin production for rollout this fall and winter.
“We’ll have to make some decision by early July to make sure that the manufacturers know what we’re looking to do, so that they know what they have to start producing in large quantities,” Marks told ABC News in an interview, last week.
Additionally, the FDA’s advisers are expected to meet on June 7 to discuss an EUA request for a COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by Novavax to protect against COVID-19 in individuals 18 years of age and older.
Novavax asked for emergency authorization of its protein-based vaccine earlier this year in January.
Novavax was part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed — the multibillion-dollar program that was created at the onset of the pandemic to quickly bring safe and effective vaccines to market.
–Former pro baller Dwyane Wadecelebrated an educational accomplishment this weekend when he received his honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Marquette University.
Returning to his alma mater to accept the honor, Wade also served as the commencement speaker for the undergraduate class of 2022.
In his speech, he told a personal anecdote about his failure to pass the ACT exam and fear of not attending Marquette to play basketball, only for the coach to believe in him beyond his physical abilities and continue with the offer to the school. Wade says he remembers being “terrified” but called the moment “exhilarating.” He encouraged the students to find solitude in scary moments in life.
–Unfortunately for Gunna, it doesn’t look like the rapper will be released from jail anytime soon.
According to ABC affiliate WSB, an Atlanta judge denied bond for Gunna, born Sergio Kitchens, after prosecutor Don Geary argued that the rapper is one of the main members of the alleged Young Slime Life gang involved in the RICO case.
Expressing concern over the safety of witnesses, the judge decided not to side with Gunna’s defense attorney, Steve Sadow, who proposed a list of conditions for the rapper’s bond, including a $750,000 secured bond and house arrest with electronic monitoring, among other things.
Gunna’s trial is set for January 9, 2023.
—Oprah Winfrey recently visited the set of the upcoming movie musical The Color Purple. The legendary TV host and executive producer of the film says she “burst into happy tears” at the sight of Danielle Brooks, who’ll reprise Winfrey’s 1985 role as Sophia. “It felt like the baton was truly being passed on in one of the most special moments in my life,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — Police have identified a person in connection with the unprovoked fatal shooting of 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez on a Q train in New York City on Sunday, according to police sources.
The person, who is still at large, is a 25-year-old man from Brooklyn with about 20 prior arrests, including an outstanding gun charge from last year. He also has prior arrests for assault, robbery, menacing and grand larceny, sources said. His name has not been released.
Detectives have also recovered the gun used in the shooting.
It is believed the suspect handed the gun to a homeless man as he fled the Canal Street station. The homeless man then apparently sold the gun for $10 to a third person, who reported it to police, the sources said.
The New York Police Department released surveillance photos Monday of the suspect believed to have shot Enriquez taken shortly after he exited the subway.
The motive for the shooting is still unknown.
Witnesses say the suspect was pacing back and forth in the last car of a Manhattan-bound train around 11:45 a.m. when he pulled out a gun and fired it at Enriquez unprovoked, according to NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.
The shooting comes a little over a month after a Brooklyn subway rider opened fire on a train car, wounding 10 people. The suspect in that shooting, Frank James, was arrested one day later in lower Manhattan.
Transit crime is up 62.5% in the city year-to-date from 2021, according to NYPD statistics.
The final week of testimony continued in the Johnny Depp defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard. Unlike much of last week’s testimony, most of the witnesses on Monday were live in the Fairfax, Virginia, courtroom.
Depp’s attorneys had a chance to cross-examine a series of expert witnesses brought to the court by Heard’s team. Among them was Dr. Richard Moore, a hand surgeon from Wilmington, North Carolina, who claimed the actor’s fingertip could not have been severed by a vodka bottle thrown by Heard, as he claimed.
On cross-examination, however, Moore admitted he never treated Depp and, in the end, he couldn’t “definitively” say what happened to the actor’s finger, except that it appeared “crushed.”
Another witness who was brought to testify by Heard’s attorneys was Kathryn Arnold, who was billed as an expert in the movie industry.
She testified that Heard could have been as big a star as Jason Momoa, Chris Pine, Wonder Woman herself Gal Gadot and Emmy winner Zendaya, but for negative social media attention Heard got as a result of her controversial Washington Post op-ed that Depp claims defamed him.
She missed her “Star is Born moment,” Arnold insisted.
On cross-examination, one of Depp’s attorneys, Wayne Dennison, managed to flummox Arnold, insisting these names were not “comparable actors” to Heard.
“She’s never been the title character in a movie, she’s never been on, what, eight TV shows [like Momoa],” Depp’s attorney said. “You are giving her the same career as Mr. Momoa,” he insisted, incredulous.
“Zendaya is so famous she goes by one name,” the attorney pressed, sarcastically.
On Wednesday, Depp‘s ex Kate Moss is expected to testify live via video. The model, who dated Depp from 1994 to 1997, previously defended Depp against abuse allegations.
Depp’s lawyers were previously seen celebrating quietly when Heard mentioned a tabloid story that claimed Depp threw the model down a flight of stairs. The moment on the stand opened up the opportunity to have Moss defend their client during this trial — and gives Depp’s lawyers the chance to question Heard’s exes, if they choose to do so.
Judge Penney Azcarate has set closing arguments for May 27.
Harry Styles is the latest celebrity to record a bedtime story for the British kids’ TV channel CBeebies. For his story, he really leaned into his Harry’s House theme by reading a book by Jess Hitchman called In Every House, On Every Street.
In the sweet video, Harry, wearing brown and blue polka-dot pajamas and a beaded necklace, opens by saying, “Hi, I’m Harry. Welcome to my house. I love it here. I like to listen to music and read and hang out with my friends. Tonight’s story is about a house full of love and laughter.”
Harry goes on to read the story, which features a kid who takes readers through each room in his house, pointing out all the special things that he and his family do there, and wondering if other people’s homes are just as special.
After declaring that he loves the story, Harry notes, “It doesn’t matter if you live in a house, a flat or a boat — it’s love that turns wherever YOU live into a home.”
Parker McCollum‘s “Pretty Heart” has been certified two times Platinum by the RIAA and “To Be Loved By You” is certified Gold. Parker was surprised with plaques commemorating the achievements at his sold-out show at Ascend Amiptheatre in Nashville on Saturday.
Jimmie Allen and Walker Hayes are appearing at the K-LOVE Fan Awards this week. Jimmie will present at the ceremony, while Walker performs with Christian singer Riley Clemmons. The show will film in Nashville on Friday and air on TBN on June 3.
The War and Treaty have signed a record deal with UMG Nashville. The husband-and-wife duo of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter performed with Dierks Bentley at the 2021 ACM Awards.
Part of New Music Friday this week will be a new song by Ye and late Florida rapper XXXTentacion called “True Love.”
The song reportedly appeared on Ye’s Donda 2, which was released in February this year. Since the album was only made available via Ye’s Stem Player, many fans haven’t heard the track.
The song’s official release comes by way of Columbia Records and will appear on XXXTentacion’s upcoming project, Look at Me: The Album and Ye’s Donda 2, which will have a rerelease soon. According to a press release, the song’s cover art, designed by Ye, features a few of X’s handwritten notes, scanned from a journal that his mother found recently.
“True Love” plays over the end credits of Look at Me: XXXTENTACION, a documentary that will begin to air on Hulu this Thursday, May 26.
The Lumineers, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds and Alanis Morissette will headline the inaugural Oceans Calling Festival, taking place September 30 to October 2 in Ocean City, Maryland.
Other artists on the bill include Cage The Elephant, Young the Giant, Dirty Heads, Jimmy Eat World, Sublime with Rome, Grouplove, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Wilderado. Festival co-founder O.A.R. will also perform multiple sets.
“We are thrilled to host Oceans Calling Festival in Ocean City, Maryland, and celebrate all our incredible city has to offer,” says Mayor Rick Meehan. “Thank you to C3 Presents and Maryland’s own O.A.R. for bringing an event of this magnitude to the Ocean City Boardwalk. We look forward to seeing everyone!”
Tickets go on sale this Wednesday, May 25, at noon ET. For the full lineup and all ticket info, visit OceansCallingFestival.com.
